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STS 131:Science Technology & Environmental Justice

The Bay Area is renowned for its technological innovations and progressive politics, including environmental justice activism. This course explores the multifaceted intersections of science, technology, and environmental issues, in the Bay Area and beyond. It also facilitates students' engagement with Wikipedia, as contributors and analysts. Throughout, students investigate the politics of place, with an eye to inequalities of race, class, gender, age, disability, and citizenship. Topics include: Internet and "new economy" geographies; public health and urban planning; food systems; climate change; innovation policy; "undone science."

STS 140:Science, Technology and Politics

This course will critically interrogate the relationship between science and technology and politics. Politics plays a significant role in the production of scientific knowledge and technological artifacts. Science and technology in turn constitute crucial elements of politics and governance in modern democracy. This course will explore these interactions through (1) key theoretical texts in STS and (2) case studies of such issues as climate change, race and science, urban planning, elections and technology, and information technology in social movements. Preference to juniors and seniors. First class attendance mandatory. Enrollment limited to 16.

STS 160Q:Technology in Contemporary Society

Preference to sophomores. Introduction to the STS field. The natures of science and technology and their relationship, what is most distinctive about these forces today, and how they have transformed and been affected by contemporary society. Social, cultural, and ethical issues raised by recent scientific and technological developments. Case studies from areas such as information technology and biotechnology, with emphasis on the contemporary U.S. Unexpected influences of science and technology on contemporary society and how social forces shape scientific and technological enterprises and their products. Enrollment limited to 12.

| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, WAY-SI

STS 190:Issues in Technology and the Environment

Humans have long shaped and reshaped the natural world with technologies. Once a menacing presence to conquer or an infinite reserve for resources, nature is now understood to require constant protection from damage and loss. This course will examine humanity's varied relationship with the environment, with a focus on the role of technology. Topics include: industrialization, modernism, nuclear technology, and biotechnology. Students will explore theoretical and methodological approaches in STS and conduct original research that addresses this human-nature-technology nexus. STS majors must have Senior status to enroll in this Senior Capstone course.

| UG Reqs: WAY-SI

STS 200A:Food and Society: Politics, Culture and Technology

This course will examine how politics, culture, and technology intersect in our food practices. Through a survey of academic, journalistic, and artistic works on food and eating, the course will explore a set of key analytical frameworks and conceptual tools in STS, such as the politics of technology, classification and identity, and nature/culture boundaries. The topics covered include: the industrialization of agriculture; technology and the modes of eating (e.g., the rise of restaurants); food taboos; globalization and local foodways; food and environmentalism; and new technologies in production (e.g., genetically modified food). Through food as a window, the course intends to achieve two broad intellectual goals. First, students will explore various theoretical and methodological approaches in STS. In particular, they will pay particular attention to the ways in which politics, culture, and technology intersect in food practices. Second, student will develop a set of basic skills and tools for their own critical thinking and empirical research, and design and conduct independent research on a topic related to food. First class attendance mandatory. STS majors must have Senior status to enroll in this Senior Capstone course.

STS 200C:STS Senior Capstone (ANTHRO 200C)

Genetics, Ethics and Society. This course will explore three socially transforming components of genetics research that hold simultaneously liberating and constraining possibilities for populations and publics, both locally and globally. Topically the course will be divided into three sections. First, we will examine past and present issues dealing with the study of human subjects, as well as recent proposals to eventually bring full genome scans to every individual (personal genomics). Next we will learn of large-scale projects that aim to map the presence of environmental pathogens by their genetic signatures on a planetary scale and how different global populations may be affected. The last section of the course will focus on still other projects and policies that aim to expand the scope and capacity of state and international law enforcement through DNA-based forensics (the FBI CODIS database and the UK¿s Human Provenance Pilot Project). Projects like the latter also overlap with theories about community, families, and citizens who may or may not be linked through DNA. New concepts, such as the forensic "genetic informant" within a family unit, human DNA and isotope ¿country matches¿ in cases of state asylum, and DNA based kinship rules for family reunification in many Western countries, will be explored. In all three sections we will also examine scientific ethics when subject populations are minorities, or somehow structurally disadvantaged globally.n This capstone course will provide students with tools to explore and critically assess the various technical, social, and ethical positions of researchers, as well as the role of the state and certain publics in shaping scientific research agendas that promise to reorganize critical aspects of human life. Students will be encouraged to explore these dynamics within such important societal domains as health, law, markets of bio-surveillance, and the growing industry of disease and heritage DNA identity testing among others. We will read works from social scientists of science practice, ethicists, medial humanists and scientists. This course will equip students with tools to write about the intersection of science and society and to engage in a research project that relates to the topical foci of the course, broadly conceived.

| UG Reqs: WAY-SI

STS 200D:Text Technologies: A History (ENGLISH 184H)

Beginning with cave painting, carving, cuneiform, hieroglyph, and other early textual innovations, survey of the history of writing, image, sound, and byte, all text technologies employed to create, communicate and commemorate. Focus on the recording of language, remembrance and ideas explicating significant themes seen throughout history; these include censorship, propaganda, authenticity, apocalypticism, technophobia, reader response, democratization and authority. The production, transmission and reception of tablet technology, the scroll, the manuscript codex and handmade book, the machine-made book, newspapers and ephemera; and investigate the emergence of the phonograph and photograph, film, radio, television and digital multimedia.The impact of these various text technologies on their users, and try to draw out similarities and differences in our cultural and intellectual responses to evolving technologies. STS majors must have senior status to enroll in this senior capstone course.

STS 200E:Technology, Nature, and Environmentalism

Humans have long shaped and reshaped the natural world with technologies. Once a menacing presence to conquer or an infinite reserve for resources, nature is now understood to require constant protection from damage and loss. Humanity's relationships with the environment have changed over time and differed across societies. In this course, students (1) explore diverse ways in which people in different historical and cultural settings have conceptualized nature and their relationships with it, with a focus on the role of technology; and (2) learn the basics of STS research and conduct an original study that addresses this human-nature-technology nexus. First class attendance mandatory. STS majors must have senior status to enroll in this senior capstone course.

Introduction to interdisciplinary approaches to gender, sexuality, queer, trans and feminist studies. Topics include the emergence of sexuality studies in the academy, social justice and new subjects, science and technology, art and activism, history, film and memory, the documentation and performance of difference, and relevant socio-economic and political formations such as work and the family. Students learn to think critically about race, gender, and sexuality from local and global perspectives.

How different disciplines approach topics and issues central to the study of ethnic and race relations in the U.S. and elsewhere. Lectures by senior faculty affiliated with CSRE. Discussions led by CSRE teaching fellows. Includes an optional Haas Center for Public Service certified Community Engaged Learning section.